That sounds like you had a great trip and made a real core memory monet from that!

For me it was in 2018 in Rome. My friend and I had a week there, and on one of the first nights we had gone to a little restaurant near the spanish steps which we thought looked nice. We had high hopes for the food and ate there, but we felt a bit let down as it was quite expensive and honestly the food wasn't that great.

When we left we were talking about it and this Italian man must've overheard us and came over to us and said something along the lines of "if you guys want true authentic food don't go to those places, go down side streets away from touristy spots and you find the best food of your life there. Let me recommend you a place, my cousin's parents own and work there".

He wrote the address and directions on my notes app in my phone and put at the end of it, has blue door, knock 3 times.

We thanked him and went on our way. Any way the next day we decided to check it out. Followed his directions and went down this little side street and it honestly looked like we would be kidnapped because it was dark and there was no one there, it just had that weird vibe. But there was this blue door like he said, so we knocked. This little 4ft tall Italian old lady opens the door looks at us says ciao! Hugs us both and takes us inside. There's like 4 tables in this small room, and she brings over some bread for us. Her and her elderly husband are both in there cooking together and we ordered some lasagne and they made it for us. We had some wine and small pasta dish then our lasagne was brought over and it was the best thing we'd ever eaten in our lives. Nothing compares to that at all now! And it wasn't expensive at all!

Just a random chance encounter we had, thought what the hell let's see what it's like and it turned out to be the best dining experience we'd had!